Nordenskioldbreen - Day 1

On Friday, I ran out of my dormitory building with my heavy winter jacket and my camping backpack onto the bus that would take us to the port. As soon as the bus left, I thought about all the things I should have packed, but didn't. More clothes, more food, more everything.   

We arrived at the port and a small tourist boat was waiting for us. My professor looked down at my camping backpack and asked me if it was my daypack. 'No,' I said uneasily, 'This is everything.' 'Won't you want a pack for the v field?' I hastily took out my plastic Apple store backpack and packed a couple things, then rushed onto the boat. 

Pretty soon, we were done packing all of our heavy crates and shovels onto the boat, and we set off into the Arctic ocean for Nordenskioldbreen to the north.  The sea was calm, the weather mild, so the trip was without any problems. I stood on the deck, taking pictures of the beautiful snow-capped mountains that we passed. 

I saw my first iceberg coming off of the glacier (ok, technically a bergy bit).

Once we arrived at our landing site, we slowly and piecemeal brought our baggage to the shore in a small inflatable motorboat, a Zodiac. There should have been two, but one of them had a dead battery. When it was finally my turn, I descended over the side of the ship into the little Zodiac and clung to the sides very tightly. Then we again took all the baggage from the shore up to the cabin that had been placed there. I was overheating in all my layers.

After a bit of struggling we put our tents up, and then started placing heavy stones all around the edges so that the strong wind wouldn't blow the tents away.

Inside the heated cabin we had snacks, and then fish and potato stew. It was really good, especially considering the location. After dinner, we were told that a polar bear had been sighted across the fjord on an island he had been seen before. Polar bear shifts hd been posted on the back door. My first shift was midnight to 1AM, which wasn't the worst. Also it was going to rain, so we needed to dig trenches. So before going to bed for an hour at 11, we all dug trenches around our tents and put the dirt on our tent flaps to make it more wind-resistant. My sleeping bag was nice and warm and I was in the most comfortable position when midnight came and I needed to climb to the top of the ridge by the camp for my polar bear watch. 

On the top of the ridge was 1) Binoculars 2) a flare gun 3) a half-loaded rifle 4) a radio, and 5) a white Siberian husky named Troll who was making a constant whining sound. Troll would continue whining and howling for the entirety of the night. So Polar Bear watch was really more Cuddle with Troll Hour. Me and my partner for the watch would take turns between using the binoculars to search the horizon for the bear, and holding and petting Troll so that we wouldn't wake everyone up.  Finally I was allowed to go back to sleep, and my first day of field work at Norrdenskioldbreen was at an end.

More to come...

Saturday, An Abandoned Coal Mine, Sunday, Rainy pictures, Monday, Digging Sand in the Arctic Rain

So the last time I posted to the blog, I had just gotten home at 4am after the big party. As can be expected, I was really tired for the entirety of Saturday. At around 4, my friends Hannah, Sisi, and Veronika invited me to come with them to the Santa Claus Mine just up on the hill next to our dorms. It looked really close, and the mine was just my kind of creepy, so I agreed to come. It was a lot further and a lot steeper than I thought. It was about a half-hour long nearly-vertical climb. I was very winded by the time I had gotten to the top, and of course I forgot my water bottle. 

Santa Claus Mine

The mine was abandoned in the early 1900's and the wood was all rotting and crumbly. In retrospect, I finally understand why they'd name a coal mine after Santa Claus - Santa is meant to give coal to naughty children, and this is where he gets it. But has anyone actually ever received coal as a present?

As I said, the wood was very old, but in order to get inside, we needed to climb onto the rickety wooden walkway and into that door pictured above. 

Inside it was very dark (We had all forgotten to bring flashlights), but inside we found the little rail-line where the coal trains passed, maybe a kind of scale, and not much else. Where part of the roof was missing, a little snowbank was sitting, having survived the summer.

The last spot we saw was the abandoned mine-shaft. It looked very spooky, and because we had no flashlights, we couldn't venture inside. I want to though. Who knows what Lovecraftian horrors lurks in an abandoned Arctic coal mine?

After a knee-popping descent back down, I returned to Nybyen and made dried-fruit-and-nut energy balls. 

The next day was very foggy and rainy, so I lay in bed doing nothing substantial until 2pm, when I decided I needed to get milk and eggs, and also that I wanted to explore more of Longyearbyen. So I wandered around Longyearbyen in the rain, walking the residential streets (there's like 2 or 3),  and walked to the coast. Because the rain, the area with birds was flooded, so I just bought my milk and eggs and went home. 

House with reindeer meat outside

In front of the flooded coast. The coastal road can be seen rising out from the flooded area in the upper left corner.

Monday was our first field excursion. We took a 15 minutes bus ride, where we saw the "suburbs" of Longyearbyen composed of lone houses on the hillside, really in the middle of no where already in the middle of no where. We arrived at Bolterdalen, a glacial fjord with a lot of vegetative ground cover. It's strange to be in landscapes that developed in the past millennia or even century rather than back in distant geologic time. Anyway, it was raining, a lot. We spent a good two hours just digging out outcrops in the rain and cold, which was near impossible when we got to a thick, sticky clay layer. But a geologists got to do what they have to, and we persevered and made little holes all along the exposed river bank.  I learned how to find strike and dip with a compass and clinometer, a skill I never learned at UChicago, which is embarrassing. I don't understand how UChicago's geology program could have so little focus on field methods. We unfortunately didn't get a chance to do everything at the site, we ran out of time to investigate clast fabrics (the overall directions of rocks embedded in the earth, which give an indication of glacial movement direction.  We had a number of students with rifles, but they didn't do a good job of keeping their rifles with them, and we were all yelled at at the end of the day.

At the end of the day I was wet and a little cold, but it honestly wasn't too bad. I had fun, and learned a lot of field techniques. Also shoveling. Which is definitely exercise.

The evening afterwards , I went to have home-made pizza, and on the way back, my walking companion, a German PhD student named Benedict, had us wandering around the hills of Longyearbyen late at night (though it was of course still bright out). It was very strange, and perhaps a waste of time. 

The rest of this week has been spent analyzing the samples we collected from the trip and preparing for our upcoming 5 day field work trip to a glacial fjord several valleys over. That's tomorrow, Friday. 

First Three days of Classes

The rest of my week has been pleasant, filled with introductions and lectures. I had my first three days of lectures with my teacher Lena Hakarsson, who is extremely enthusiastic and energetic, and she reminds me a bit of my stratigraphy teacher, Sue Kidwell. Lena brought in dough she had made to illustrate the movement of glaciers and then picked up some pebbles and sand she brought with the sticky dough to illustrate englacial transport of sediment. That was a waste of dough, but a good scientific illustration. The subject material I think will be really interesting, exactly the kind of glacial earth history that I want to study. We also get to take 15 minute breaks every hour, which is really nice. I wish we had that at UChicago more often. My classmates are quiet, except for the Australian girl, Sisi, and the petite German girl, Svenja. They and me are really the only people who give more than one sentence answers to the professor's questions or ask questions of our own. I think many of my class-mates are very intelligent, it's just difficult to quickly process science lectures in a language other than their mother tongue. That must be frustrating.

Everyday after school, I always plan to work on my blog, my comic, Sliced Bread literary magazine work, etc, but the 45 min uphill walk with a backpack filled with groceries always tires me out to the point that I just want to eat dinner and then talk to people on Facebook. Slowly I've been working on things. I've paid my tuition, got a SIM card for Telenor, and applied for an overseas ballot.

On Friday evening, UNIS had the big Icebreaker party where people from all the programs as well as a number of Longyearbyen locals came to drink, eat hot dogs and dance. I helped to set up, signed up to help make hot dogs, and promised I would help clean up afterwards. The party started, and people trickled in. I spent like an hour making hot dogs, heating up buns, and serving people. By then, people had started drinking the copious alcohol that was available. I had a Isbjorn bear, which was a little light, but it was free and had a big polar bear on it.

The whole party was sports themed, so the planners had us all split up into teams to compete in little games. I wanted to start a team with my friends, another American and an Australian, and I thought it would be funny to name the team The Colonies. Unfortunately, they were both volunteering when the first game, a sack relay race started. Other partygoers were added to my team: an extremely energetic Indonesian geology masters student named  Armando, a Russian woman named Anastasia and a native Longyearbyener named Heinrich. I was very bad at the sack race, and racing with a  ping-pong ball in a spoon in my mouth was even worse. Somehow (Armando lying or something) we got into third. Armando's yelling was a bit much for me and the games stopped being fun. So I went and hid in the corner and talked to some people I knew as well as a Scotsman and a northern Irish girl. A very tall Norwegian sat down and started loudly talking to me, and I had no idea what he was saying. The music was getting louder, but it was still very bright outside. I had tried to yell my introduction info (name, country of origin, area of study) so much that my voice was going, and I wished I was somewhere else. At around 11, people started leaving, and I wanted to leave too, but I promised to stay to help clean up. 

The party at about 11pm.

 So I instead went upstair and found some comfy couches with a window view looking over the fjord. I watched the sun nearly set over the ocean. It was beautiful, but I was suddenly very homesick. I stayed up there alone for a while, and then some native Longyearbyen residents came and talked to me a little. Then one of them got out a toy helicopter and I watched them play with it for about ten minutes. They left, and I was alone again. I went downstairs, and people were dancing even more wildly now. I danced a little, but in the end, I didn't want to be stepped on by one of the huge Norwegians, so I spent some time just sitting, letting the party wash over me.

Finally it was 2am, time to clean up.  Some drunk Norwegian guys kept asking for more hotdogs, of which there were none. I gave them some hot dog buns instead, and they grumbled, then made a big mess putting the leftover condiments on it (aside: What is "Hamburger sauce"? It looks like chunky Russian salad dressing). One of the girls helping me clean told me that Scandinavian guys are nice to look at but have no in between state between sober and completely smashed. At around 3:30am, we were finally done cleaning and putting everything away. I walked back with my classmate from Tyrol, all the way back to Nybyen 45 minutes away, and then nearly immediately went to sleep. Astonishingly, the sun was still brightly shining, so there was no sense of time having passed.  

Longyearbyen at 3AM

Next week, I have my first field excursion, so stay tuned for that. 

Safety training

Unfortunately I don't have many pictures of my first two days at UNIS, even though they were quite exciting.  The first two days of any course here is mandatory safety training, which is rifle training, first aid, safety equipment, and survival suit training.

The walk from Nybyen, the dorm buildings, and the UNIS building is always between thirty and forty minutes long and it was drizzling as I walked with some of my fellow classmates down the road to UNIS. I got to UNIS right as my first class started. It was strange seeing people I hadn't met yet, as I felt like I knew everyone in the class, but of course of the twenty students I had met only half. The instructor, Frede, was the picture of a Norwegian outdoorsman, with blue eyes and a grizzled white beard. As he continued to talk about the dangers of Svalbard, he pulled the sleeves of his thermal shirt up to reveal colorful sleeve tattoos on both arms. He spoke about wearing proper clothing, avoiding glacial crevasses and slippery rock slopes, and who to call in case of an emergency. Soon it was time to take the bus to the rifle range.

We passed the Svalbard Seed vault (I'll visit that later), and then arrived at the rifle range. It was a small wooden shack facing a mountainside. We went inside into a cramped room where Frede showed us a poster-board with a number of plastic slides on rifle sighting, proper rifle care, when to load the rifle, etc. He explained that the rifles we were going to use are lethal up to 5 km, able to kill someone at the UNIS building from Nybyen.  Then it was time to learn how to load the rifles. Using dummy ammo, we learned how to properly half-load our bolt-action rifles. And then live ammo was brought out. Frede waved a loaded rifle around. It was actually quite safe, he made it pretty clear how half-loading a rifle makes it impossible to fire unless the bolt is pulled back, pushed in and locked. We learned how to position ourselves into the lying down shooting position, the classic movie sniper pose with the legs at an angle to the gun and one pulled up. It was comfortable enough. We were told to hold our breath and gradually tighten our trigger finger until the gun fires. We should be surprised every time the gun is fired. These guidelines allow the gun to be aimed more accurately. Then it was time to actually shoot. We split into two groups, and I was in the first group. We loaded the rifles like we'd been taught, and lay down in the proper position, with ear protection. Then we were told to shoot four shots when ready. I tried to relax, but then gunshots were all around me. My shoulders tensed up and I felt like I forgot everything I had just been taught. It was like being in the revolutionary war with all of us shooting in a line. I lost track of how many shots I fired. When we stood up, I could feel myself shaking. We all walked over to the targets, and it turns out I actually hit my target three times out of four.

We then had to learn to shoot from a crouched position. The steps to get into this position are as follows: stand with your feet shoulder-width apart, turn your right foot ninety degrees, drop your right knee so that it lies where the toes once were, move the left foot half a foot-length up and turn it forty-five degrees right. Now you can sit down on your right foot and rest your left elbow on the outside of your left knee. Now you can hold your rifle with your cheek pressed against the stock. Also if your anything like me, you will be in excruciating pain in your knees and ankles. Shooting the rifle hurt so much because there was a sudden shock to my already hurting knees and ankle. I tried my best to focus and relax, and shoot the way I was suppose to, but I could not wait to get out of that position.

I hit the target four times, but they were a bit spread out. I proudly showed my bullet holes to Frede, who put a little check by my name. I was so relieved. When we all returned back to the shack, the next group was sent to shoot. Frede called my name. He said he wanted me to shoot with this group too. I screamed internally, then walked to where he pointed me too and got back into the crouched position, my knees and ankles protesting even more. But I was able to shoot a little bit closer, and the wooden wheel he used to measure just barely covered all the holes. So I passed the rifle test, and can now carry a rifle into the field. When I returned to my room, my shoulders ached from holding in tension, but I slept very well that night.

The next day, we spent the morning practicing first aid skills, which was maybe not fun, but wasn't stressful. We giggled while patting and touching people we had only just met. The new first aid equipment I was shown was really cool. These things called Sam Splints seem really handy, and I sort of want to buy one for myself. We trained with CPR, bandages, splints, and emergency blankets. Next, we were shown the emergency communications equipment we would be given, emergency beacon, SatPhone, other kind of SatPhone, GPS, and two-way radio. We were also shown the emergency packs for winter and summer seasons with a number of useful things. The logistics personnel (Sebastian?) demonstrated how to use the gasoline-powered camp-stove (big flames at the beginning) and then we practiced setting up a tent.

After a short break, Frede came to show us the survival suits. These are heavily insulated flotation suits that are used to ensure survival in the event we are dumped into the Arctic Ocean from a boat. So we all suited up, trying to squeeze into the skintight wetsuit layer.

We were then driven to the docks of Longyearbyen, and we waded into the Arctic Ocean. It wasn't exactly comfortable being in a very bulky wetsuit, but it wasn't particularly cold. I got a bit wet. We then needed to jump in swim to each other and form a chain, and then swim all to shore, which we did. And then we were done with our safety training! Now I am a little bit more prepared for my outdoor adventures in the Arctic.